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posted by janrinok on Sunday October 30 2016, @04:58PM   Printer-friendly
from the don't-run-unknown-code! dept.

AtomBomb: The New Zero-Day Windows Exploit Microsoft Can't Fix?

There's a new zero-day Microsoft Windows exploit in the wild by the name of AtomBomb, and Microsoft may not be able to fix it.

Ensilo security researchers have discovered a new zero-day exploit in Windows that attackers can make use of to inject and execute malicious code. The researches call the exploit AtomBombing because of its use of a Windows function called Atom Tables.

What's particularly interesting about the exploit is that it does not rely on security vulnerabilities in Windows components but native Windows functions. This means, according to the researchers, that Microsoft won't be able to patch the issue.

It is particularly worrying that the issue affects all versions of Windows, and that security programs that run on the system -- firewall or antivirus for instance -- won't stop the execution of the exploit.

The technique works in the following way on an abstract level:

  1. Malicious code needs to be executed on a Windows machine. A user might run malicious code for instance.
  2. This code is blocked usually by antivirus software or other security software or policies.
  3. In the case of AtomBombing, the malicious program writes the malicious code in an atom table (which is a legitimate function of Windows and won't be stopped therefore).
  4. It then uses legitimate processes via APC (Async Procedure Calls) , a web browser for instance, to retrieve the code from the table undetected by security software to execute it.

You can find an extremely detailed explanation of AtomBombing here. Time to run Windows only in VMs?

New code injection attack works on all Windows versions - Help Net Security

Source: https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2016/10/28/code-injection-windows-atombombing/


Original Submission #1Original Submission #2

 
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  • (Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Sunday October 30 2016, @05:40PM

    by Nerdfest (80) on Sunday October 30 2016, @05:40PM (#420573)

    When I had a Windows VM, I generally reverted it back to a snapshot anyway, except for the times I ran it just to install updates. (As a side note, I'm amazed at how long it takes to install Windows updates, even without the repeated reboots that are sometimes required. Do they throttle their downloads to a trickle or something?)

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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 30 2016, @05:49PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 30 2016, @05:49PM (#420576)

    Nope, they reparse a gigantic dependancy tree, spinlock, make repeated expensive calls to unchangeable metadata and do other anti-patterns.

  • (Score: 2) by Webweasel on Monday October 31 2016, @03:52PM

    by Webweasel (567) on Monday October 31 2016, @03:52PM (#420905) Homepage Journal

    There was quite a serious bug a year or two ago with windows updates on some servers.

    It would take around 7-8 hours to just load the list of updates, with one of the services (csrss.exe) pegged at 50% cpu.

    At the time, I was not happy about staying up till 5am trying to patch servers, but the overtime bill made up for it.

    --
    Priyom.org Number stations, Russian Military radio. "You are a bad, bad man. Do you have any other virtues?"-Runaway1956